HISTOEICAL. 19 



About the year 1858 the interest of the American Palseontologists was 

 aroused by remarkable discoveries of Crinoids in the Southern and Western 

 States. Troost, at the meeting of the American Association for the Advance- 

 ment of Science, in 1850, reported the acquisition of eighty-six new species, 

 with sixteen new genera, from the State of Tennessee.^ This discovery, how- 

 ever, was totally eclipsed by the wonderful finds in the Northwest, where, at 

 Burlington alone, upwards of three hundred species were obtained, which for 

 beauty and excellence of preservation surpassed anything that had ever been 

 seen before. This one locality furnished a greater number of species than 

 had been described from America and Europe together up to 1857 ; and 

 while before, with a few exceptions, only calices had been obtained, now 

 hundreds of specimens were found in which arms, stem, and occasionally 

 the root, were preserved. The collections which were made at that time 

 by Wachsmuth, Barris, Dr. Thieme, and Hon. B. J. Hall, of Burlington, 

 and which were afterwards secured by Prof. L. Agassiz for the Museum of 

 Comparative Zoology, give testimony to the energy and enthusiasm with 

 which collecting was carried on in those days. The same interest, often 

 mingled with jealousy, was manifested by the men of science, who, anxious 

 to publish the new forms, and fearing they might be preceded by competi- 

 tors, brought out preliminary descriptions to secure priority for their species. 

 These descriptions, in many cases, were so indefinite that the identification 

 of the species was almost impossible, and this created considerable annoyance 

 and labor to later writers. 



About the same time other large deposits of Crinoids were discovered in 

 Indiana. Crawfordsville furnished upwards of thirty species, Waldron and 

 Hartsville nearly twenty. At the latter places large collections were made 

 by Dr. Moses N. Elrod and Dr. C. C. Washburn. At Louisville and sur- 

 rounding country a large number of new species were found by Lyon, 

 Yandell, and Dr. Knapp ; at Keokuk, Iowa, by Dr. Kellogg, who afterwards 

 discovered also the rich Crinoid bed at Richfield, Ohio. Still more success- 

 ful as a collector in the Keokuk rock was L. A. Cox, who found two local 

 deposits of finely preserved Crinoids, — one at Keokuk, the other at the 

 opposite side of the river, which produced nearly forty new species. Dr. 

 Roeminger discovered the Crinoid bed in the Hamilton group at Alpena, 

 Michigan ; Springer that of Lake Valley, New Mexico, in the Burlington 



* These genera and species were described by Troost in a monograph. The manuscript was deposited 

 at the time of his death in the Smithsonian Institute, but was never pubhshed, and he did not receive the 

 credit which is probably due to him. ^ 



